With advancements in computer systems and broadband internet connections, computer networks (e.g., local area networks (LANs)) have become prolific and are commonly found in both commercial and residential environments. Moreover, advances in wireless technology have enabled users to access the internet from portable electronic devices via wireless LANs (WLANs), including wireless fidelity (WiFi) employing an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.11 wireless networking protocol, Bluetooth® (a registered trademark of Bluetooth SIG, Inc.), infrared, or other wireless technology, and thereby untether themselves from the confines of a traditional office environment. Such portable devices providing wireless access may include, for example, laptop computers, cell phones, Blackberry® handheld devices (a registered trademark of Research in Motion Limited), etc.
While portable electronic devices may address mobile computing needs, they are not without limitations. For instance, a portable device, when unplugged from a conventional power outlet, can only operate for a limited amount of time using its internal battery power source, after which the battery must be recharged via the power outlet. It is known to extract power from a network port, as in a Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) application employing an IEEE 802.3af standard (see, e.g., U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0246557 A1, the disclosure of which is incorporated by reference herein). As an application of this technology, PoE is often used for supplying power to access points (APs) in a WLAN, since the APs are sometimes placed in areas in which a power outlet is not available. However, while it is known to power an individual electronic device from a direct Ethernet connection, there are currently no known mechanisms for charging the internal batteries of multiple electronic devices from a single direct connection to a power outlet.
Accordingly, there exists a need for techniques for sharing power among portable electronic devices which do not suffer from one or more of the above-noted problems exhibited by conventional approaches.